Lot Essay
Following tests undertaken by two individual metalwork experts, Christopher Bangs (author of The Lear Collection, A Study of Copper-Alloy Socket Candlesticks, AD 200-1700, Pennsylvania, 1995) and Dr. Peter Northover, (Oxford University), for which small samples were taken from two areas on each of the candlesticks, the stylistic and metallographic analysis points to an origin in France, dating to the late 16th or very early 17th Century. These reports are available with the department and will be sold with the candlesticks. The dating of the brass by comparison with other metals of a similar date shows that the impurity pattern is matched by tests on contemporary French bronze artillery. The selection of a gunmetal, based on a mixture of brass, bronze and lead is appropriate for a casting of quality and some intricacy, where as a simpler candlestick might have been made out of rather cheaper brass. Moreover, the extent of corrosion is natural rather than artificially induced.
The bearded herm-figure, a familiar feature on Renaissance furniture, appears for instance on an early 17th Century walnut armoire à deux corps in the Louvre (Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Paris, 1993, vol. I, p. 40). Almost certainly inspired by published engravings, it is interesting to note that the draughtsman Crispin de Passe II (d. after 1670) was known to have executed and published engravings of a number of herm figures, in male, female and animal forms. Flourishing in Paris from 1670-1730, he eventually settled in Amsterdam, where he founded his own printing-press (D. Franken, L'Oeuvre Gravé des Van de Passe, Amsterdam and Paris, 1881.)
The bearded herm-figure, a familiar feature on Renaissance furniture, appears for instance on an early 17th Century walnut armoire à deux corps in the Louvre (Furniture Collections in the Louvre, Paris, 1993, vol. I, p. 40). Almost certainly inspired by published engravings, it is interesting to note that the draughtsman Crispin de Passe II (d. after 1670) was known to have executed and published engravings of a number of herm figures, in male, female and animal forms. Flourishing in Paris from 1670-1730, he eventually settled in Amsterdam, where he founded his own printing-press (D. Franken, L'Oeuvre Gravé des Van de Passe, Amsterdam and Paris, 1881.)